Storm brings down trees, electric poles causing outages in Danvers

Monday

Town employees have been hard at work in the wake of the overnight storm, which brought strong winds and heavy rain.

Numerous trees and poles are down following Sunday night's storm.

Town employees have been hard at work in the wake of the overnight storm, which brought strong winds and heavy rain. The wind brought down trees and electric poles, causing power outages across town and at least one reported fire.

In particular, winds caused a couple of poles to snap in the Oak Street area, according to Fire Chief Robert Pyburn. Wires came down, and a transformer caught fire.

The fire, which was also called a ground fire, was reported around 4:30 a.m. in the vicinity of 9 Oak St., near the Rail Trail.

"[Firefighters] ended up dumping a little over 1,000 gallons of water [on the ground]," Pyburn said, explaining the wires were primary wires with extremely high voltage, which would cause "all the roots, anything else in the ground to start to burn."

Nobody was hurt as a result of the fire, he said.

Director of Public Works David Lane said there have been numerous reports of fallen trees around town — on roadways as well as on homes.

As a results, there have been a number of small outages — or outages that affect two or three house — and two big outages. The first of which was a result of the power line damaged on Oak Street.

"Danvers Electric did very well switching most of the people back on," Lane said. "We were able to get most people back on in a relatively short period of time. Work is continuing throughout the day."

The other major power outage was reported on Locust Street, he said. A large tree damaged the secondary power lines, and crews are continuing to work on getting the tree off the lines.

Lane said DPW had electric line crews that stayed on through Sunday night in anticipation of the storm.

"We had gotten weather reports that we were expecting high winds, and with the leaves still on the trees, we knew the trees would be susceptible to damage," Lane said, explaining the trees with leaves are heavier and more likely to snap.

The bulk of the work began at daybreak, around 6:30 a.m. on Monday. As of Monday afternoon, Lane did not have an estimate for power outages reported across town.

"The crews got out there and worked really hard," he said.

Lane said if anyone's power is still out, they should report it to the Danvers Electric Division.

"In certain instances, you might be the only one [in a neighborhood] out," he said. "We just want to make sure we get everyone's power back on."

See what your North Shore neighbors are saying about Sunday night's storm:

[View the story "Windy nor'easter slams Boston's North Shore" on Storify]